July 2008

If you have been given a new class (either new to you or to your college), it can be overwhelming. There are some things you can do to make it more manageable however.

Hit the internet for other people’s syllabi on the same topic.

When I was first asked to teach Early British Literature I didn’t know what sophomore students at colleges usually studied. I didn’t take that class as a sophomore. So I went to the internet and put in different names of possible courses and “syllabus” into the search engine.

Doing this let me see what other people were teaching and sometimes gave me lesson plans or lecture notes or sample essays.

It also helped me not to feel so lost.

Pick stuff you are interested in.

If there is something you love about a field, make sure you teach it.

I enjoy teaching audience to my freshman composition classes. They learn a lot and I get to show off that PhD that took me twelve years to finish.

I wrote a lot of papers on Sylvia Plath’s poetry, but I no longer care for it. So, even if our anthology has some of her poems, I skip them.

When I first started teaching Early British Literature I included all the Arthur stuff, because I thought the students would be interested. Turns out they weren’t. I learned a lot about it, but then I moved on to other literature that I was more fascinated with.

What this does is
1. make the prep time easier and
2. make the class time more animated.

When you teach what you love, it shows.

Once you have a list of possible topics to cover and a list of those topics that you like, organize it into sections.

With freshman composition, I start with writing a narrative paper, because students are most used to personal expressive writing. This lets their first paper be something they know well, themselves. I use this paper to introduce my grading system and it counts the least. Then I introduce whatever I think they need next.

For Early Brit Lit, I organized the readings into eras. When I figured out I couldn’t get to Shakespeare because I had too many earlier topics, I knew it was an issue.

Once you have the sections, organize the pieces.

One section would be research paper, since most schools require those. Then I work backwards trying to divide that up.

I want a paper and a revision. I need to teach them note taking and how to evaluate websites. I also want to talk about organization. The book has a good chapter on generating ideas and planning. All those things go into a list of sections.

If I’m going to have a compare/contrast paper, I want to introduce both kinds. Then I want to talk about how to synthesize the two together. I have a few websites with good examples they can look at. I want them to write on a particular set of topics. Whatever.

I may not use all the sections I come up with, but at least I have the beginnings of an organization system.

and what does that look like?

How did I learn to teach?

First, I learned to teach by being taught. I learned what I would not do and what I would do.

I would not:
only read the book aloud (various)
drone on solely about my personal life (7th grade math)
insult anyone’s parent (7th grade homeroom)
have too little work (8th grade math)
require knowledge levels that couldn’t be reasonably expected (7th grade science)
be nebulous about what I wanted (history teacher in college)
assume students understood my expectations (various)
assume students can read literature without helps (college English major lit courses)
think my area was the only one of importance (9th grade science)

I would:
be passionate about my subject
encourage others
give second chances
add value to a subject, a class, or an assignment
be on time
be prepared
return papers promptly
provide as clear a grading system as possible
be clear about expectations

By the time I was teaching, I had spent twelve years in K-12 and college. I had lots of excellent teachers and a few bummers.

So I knew what a good classroom situation looked like, but how did I know how to get prepared?

in a post on the usefulness of extracurricular activities.

“If your job requires you to write well, thank your English teacher.”

You’re welcome.

Textbooks, Free and Illegal, Online talks about the fact that texts are expensive and that people can often download them online.

Faced with soaring prices for textbooks, cash-strapped students have discovered a tempting, effective, but illicit alternative – pirated electronic books, available for free over the Internet.

“We think it’s a significant problem,” said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich.

I am appalled at the price of textbooks. Yes, as a teacher I get my books free, but both my sons are in college. I paid $185 for a paperback book that is 11×7 and had about 180 pages. Doesn’t that seem a little excessive? When you sell them back, you get about $15. Then the store resells them for $185. That’s right. The paperback I bought was used.

Booksellers don’t want the price of texts to go down. The publishing companies have a golden goose.

So why would they do something about it?

If I ever have a choice, I’ll go for cheaper books. Or ones we can get from Amazon or some other bookseller for less than a dollar a page.

My paper on students and information literacy was accepted to TYCA-SW.

The gentleman who contacted me (I know I have his name somewhere, but I don’t know where it is.) said that they might also like me to present on the controversial issues idea as well. It’s a “rover and filler.” That means if someone doesn’t show, they put me in. I’m good with that. I’ve written the paper they accepted already and most of the second paper as well. I need to flesh it out a bit, but….

He had looked at my website, but it’s my email website, not this nor my classroom blog. I should have given him the web addresses, but I didn’t even think of it. I’ll have to find his email and send it to him.

I wonder if it is too late to ask for internet access. For the first paper, it might be good to show them the actual blog online with the students’ work. Or maybe not. Maybe it sounds more impressive than it looks.

I wonder if I could go to iStockphotos and get photos of West Texas that show similar things to what I wrote about and create a video montage that plays while I read. That would be kind of cool.

I put in windmill… several. Put in West Texas, got a highway sign in the sunset and several windmills. There’s even a picture of a “hailstorm on the horizon.” And some really dry orange dirt, just like I talked about in one of the poems. I also found some good examples of abandoned houses, using abandoned house.

There’s a gorgeous “prairie sunrise” under farm fence. There’s also a good “prairie road.”

There’s also some good pictures of cotton including “white gold” of West Texas cotton farm field. I think I put in cotton farm. Also a good irrigation ditch picture. There’s also a Texas cotton field with the rows showing (new and green) with about a mile of flat land in the pic. “Early morning cotton boll field” looks like snow, just like in my poem. There’s also a cow shed, more modern than I was thinking, but it works.

“Young farmer headed home” looks a lot like a good rainy spring in WTX. Also “golden farming” which is in Alberta, but looks a lot like a bad spring. “One tree hill” I’m not sure about. Are the bumps in the background too big? “Wire in the sky” is sepia old fence, wood and wire, falling over. Very good for the abandoned poem.

“Oil and gas” has a pumpjack on that pumpkin orange soil. “Dried corn ready for harvest” is central Texas, but still looks like home. “Central Texas windmill” is good too. There are some good dried cornfields in central Texas pics.

“Mailbox along the dirt road” is in WTx and is fabulous. “Cotton field with ranch home” is very much WTx too. “Field of sorghum” and “Texas sunset” two of those with windmills in them. “boundary” is a cut fence with barbed wire. “open field and a dirt road” is dark and gloomy, like it’s going to storm. “Tree in a wheat field” and “field of wheat” are very good. “Peaceful landscape” is after the storm has passed. “Barn in a field of sorghum” is good too.

I can’t decide if “foggy fence-line and path” is good for what I want or not.

“Ranch windmill” is PERFECT. It’s a broken up windmill, only the tail there.

“Cotton ready to harvest” is good too. “plowed field in winter”– is that too many trees in the background?

“church in a wheat and corn field” is good. There’s “thistle and wheat” that’s good too.

“Fence in sepia” is also perfect. “windmill through barn door”

“tire swing” looks a lot like Grama’s yard.

“road near cotton” good.

Anyway, it would be very fun to do and I think it would make the poems better. Need to think about that if it gets accepted.

I should ask Aunt Norma if I can get the picture of Grampa on the tractor. That’s the perfect picture.

I am not an organized person naturally. I know where things were, but the clutter to other people was atrocious. And sometimes, when I was not thinking about it, I have left a necessary pile at home. I no longer do that.

I have figured out a few vital points for how to avoid disorganization and maximize organization easily.

Don’t accept late papers.

This comes out of the horrific experience of not having said I would not accept late papers. I had one student turn in every writing assignment, including five essays and two research papers, the week of finals. The papers were horrible, but I had no recourse but to grade them. I wasted a lot of time and, hopefully, the student wasted even more. So learn from my mistake.

But it also keeps you from having a paper come in one day late, another two days late, another a week late, and another two weeks late. You may not remember exactly what you accepted or how you counted something by the time you have finished all the grading.

I think this is a great tip, but I can’t do it myself.

Instead, what I do is I accept papers one class period late only.

I also define ahead of time how many points off that will be. If it is a MWF class and a paper is due on Monday and you turn it in Wednesday, it is ten points off. But if it is due on Friday and you turn it in Monday, you get twenty points off because you had extra time to work on it. The same holds for a Tuesday/Thursday class. If it is due on Tuesday and you turn it in Thursday, you lose ten points. If it is due Thursday and you turn it in Tuesday, you lose twenty points.

So, really this first point should be: Don’t accept papers more than one day late and make sure you know ahead of time how the grading will change due to lateness.

But if you can do the whole “No late papers,” it will be even easier and more organized.

If you do accept late papers, make sure you write “Late” in pen on the top of the paper when you receive it.

This helps you know, when you get home and are grading, that you didn’t misfile the paper, but it was late.

It also helps when the students say “Why did I lose ten points?” and you don’t remember it was late.

Have expandable file folders for each class you teach.

These are most useful if they are color coded.

As an adjunct at multiple schools I use one color for freshman comp at school 1 and another color for the same class at school 2. Then I have a different folder for composition and literature at each school.

If I were at one school and I taught four of the same course, I might change colors for MWF and TTH. That way I would know which classes I had to grab for any given day.

I also tag the file folders with name tags, identifying which class they are for. That way if I have two green folders, because I have two freshman comp courses at CC1, I know which class is which, without having to open them.

Keep all the stuff for each class together.

I keep all the student papers (and the class syllabus and roll) in these folders- including papers to be graded, papers to be returned, and papers of students who did not show up for class that day. I only take them out to grade or pass back. This cuts down on loss. Also, when a student says, “I gave them to you” I can hand them the folder and ask them to find the papers. (Usually they aren’t there, because I don’t lose them anymore using this system.)

Create student email/phone lists.

Buy a package, or two, of multicolored index cards.

Use a different color for each class. (Which should explain why you might need one or two packages. It depends on how many colors you need.)

Pass them out to students on the first day of class and ask for their name, an email they use, and a phone number you can reach them at.

I usually ask the students for two other pieces of information. (Why are you in college? What do you want to get out of this class? Or how does this class help you meet your goals for life?) It gives me an indication of their handwriting and their writing ability.

Then I put rubber bands around each set and keep them together.

If I need to contact a student, I don’t have to rely on them having given the registrar updated information.

Create a filing system for each type of class you teach.

I have taken folders (manilla or colored) and created and organized my lessons. I use a single folder for a single introduction or essay, depending on what I am doing.

For instance, for my writing class, I have a compare/contrast folder, a definition/illustration folder, a teacher introduction folder, etc. For my early British lit course, I have a Beowulf folder, a Julian of Norwich folder, a history timeline folder, etc. For my comp and lit class, I have a folder for short story introduction, for different short stories, for literary analysis, etc.

I include within the file folders any notes, ideas, suggestions, and print outs of websites I use, just in case the website goes away. That has happened before.

What this filing system allows me to do is grab the folder with the lesson I am presenting and examine it, beef it up, or weed out, and take it to class to present. I don’t have to (any longer) worry if I am going to be able to find my biography of Lewis Carroll notes or my history of fairy tales. I know I will because they are in the file folders.

If I run across a great idea, or a handout, for a topic I don’t teach, I still make a folder for it and put it with the relevant class. This means that later, if I end up teaching, for example, “Hills like White Elephants,” that I already have the beginning of a lesson. It also means that I haven’t run out of ideas of ways to change up my classes if they are getting stale.

If you are totally disorganized, start with one of these ideas and implement it.

Assuming school has already started, I would begin with announcing the new late paper policy, if that is possible.

Then I would get expandable file folders.

As I went through the semester, I would start creating my filing system. I wouldn’t worry about getting it all done to start with, but just putting each lesson in a folder when I got done with it.

This is for writers and scholars who have works that are relevant to Texans. (I think they mean very particular to Texans. Obviously almost any regular discussion would be relevant to us.)

They are taking Texas-related creative writing as well as papers on any other English-related topic. I think I am going to go through my West Texas poetry and see if I can come up with enough to submit. I may have to do some major overhauling on a few of them, but there are some good ones in there.

You have to submit the whole creative writing work, but I don’t think that would be too hard. I mean, why would I want you to judge a story on something that isn’t finished yet. Too bad Texan Anti-Alien Militia isn’t a short story. That’d be cool to submit.

The conference is taking place in Austin and is being hosted by UT. It will take place March 5-7, 2009. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2008. They prefer the full paper, but will accept a 500-word abstract.

I’d really like to put a panel together for this conference too, but I have no idea what it would be on.

I have a paper on using fairy tales to introduce literary analysis that I would like to put together. But I don’t know if that is a literature paper or a composition paper. I’m having trouble finding this year’s program. That might tell me a little more about what they are looking for.

There’s a creative writing section. I wonder if life writing/blogging counts as “creative nonfiction.” Could I work that out?

Of course, there is the state of the profession forum. I could write about adjuncting. They said the topics could cover any aspect of the English profession. I really think I should work up a proposal/paper on adjuncts. I’ve been one at two schools, three by the time the paper is due. Surely I could write about the things I have dealt with there in an interesting way. Nope. That’s last year’s topic. Drats.

For some reason I can’t get the site to come up.